08 December 2009 | Author: Katie Todd

Annotations - the new Google Analytics feature

Does Google ever slow down? Following a slew of recent updates and events that'd have anyone's head spinning, here comes yet another device in the ever increasing Google toolbox - Annotations. The extra could prove useful to a great deal of people who have found themselves pulling hair at the thought of explaining or trying to comprehend difficult technical analytical info.

The feature will allow various users to add comments to reports, files and charts to aid comprehension. And Annotations lets companies pull on the entire resources available rather than those of just one or two individuals when dealing with its outputs.

This is very handy when it comes to keeping on top of things, but what else can the function do that's gotten people so excited? Well, Annotations can essentially act as a "logbook", says Google on its blog, keeping tabs on exactly when something happened and making a note of it. Users can then access the stored data and add comments, meaning that nobody has to go chasing up other departments to find out exactly why there was a traffic spike at this time of this day, or who's responsible for what part of the site.

One of the best features has got to be how simple it has become to find out "what happened". Rather than spending hours chasing up others to find explanations for mysterious changes in a site's activity - a dip in traffic, a spike in referrals - everybody can annotate the Analytics page to benefit others, including clients, account managers and anyone else with access.

According to the Google Analytics blog: "Annotations complements existing anomaly detection by capturing the tribal intelligence of your company, which tends to be the most expensive and easily lost resource of all."

The feature has supposedly been one of the top requested for the service in a long time - and, judging from its usefulness and time-saving measures, it's not hard to see why.

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